Keep Climate Change in the Curriculum

My name is Esha and I am a secondary school student from The Heathland School. Geography has always fascinated me. Volcanoes, globalisation, development, you name it. It’s the one subject that has left me with the desire to find out more. In fact, it inspired me enough to realise that not only is the earth a beautiful place, but one that is in desperate need of our help. More importantly, it inspired me to get out there and do as much as I could.

Climate change is the most pressing and threatening issue to modern day society. Through lack of understanding from generations before us, we are having to fix it. And how can we do this without education? However, yet again, our government - part of the generation who bear more responsibility for this problem intend to not only fail to act on climate change themselves, but to obscure the truth, and any chance we have of acting from children and young people. It is outrageous that Michael Gove can even consider the elimination of climate change education for under 14s. We must keep climate change in our curriculum in order for young people to be as skilled and informed to take on this challenge as we are taking it on today.

Unfortunately, this takes away the potential in the adults of tomorrow to take a stand to cease the loss of their future. Personally, the one thing that inspired me enough to get involved were my Geography lessons. I was able to understand the many issues surrounding climate change, the many perspectives. The beauty of Geography is the fact that it enables us to express frankly the problems earth and humanity faces, without hiding the truth, yet this change is removing the power that it currently possesses. I began to realise that it wasn’t fair that people in my situation were inadvertently causing harm to people less well off due to our own carelessness. I began to realise that it was my responsibility.